Election day will be exciting. Prayers will be answered. People will shout out, “Amen!”

The news talk show sock puppets will be talking about unprecedented voter turn outs- not to mention a record level turn outs of first time voters, black Americans, Hispanics and other minorities at the polls. They will talk about the American people’s hunger for hope and change. And they may even express a certain surprise to the unexpected tide of white votes for Senator Barack Obama.

Throughout the day and early evening, Journalists will be chatty and make wild eyed predictions as cautiously as possible in anticipation of the electoral votes. I plan to look for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It’s not difficult to imagine that Indecision 2008 could just be the most insightful coverage of the elections

More thoughtful commentators will be reminded of the past excitement of Ronald Reagan and others, JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. These are interesting times. Everyone, everywhere will overuse the idea of history in the making.

Yes, everywhere.

The excitement and anticipation will not only stir in the hearts and prayers of Americans, they will stir in hearts, minds and prayers across the planet. I would not be surprised if Kenyans celebrate the day. Senator Obama is a son of Kenya as much as he is a son of America.

The Death of the Neo-Conservative Movement… and spiritual bankruptcy of the left and right

Neo-conservativism as a movement is dead. It began with a passion for classical liberalism and left-sided problematics. It stirred with intellectual curiosity and an almost spiritual enthusiasm. However, the neo-conservative movement evolved into a souless snap step that merely served the greed and folly of undisciplined capitalists. On election day, some will bemoan the tragic end of something that could have become an engine of hope.

The values of the Democrats will not be vindicated if there is an Obama victory. Senator Obama will get a landslide of votes even if he were an Independent. Hopefully, he knows it too. Hopefully, Senator Obama will remember that he owes his rise not to the Party but to the American people and their willingness to suspend their ho-hum apathy and cynicism when they heard Obama’s message of hope.

When Senator Hillary Clinton threw the kitchen sink at Obama, it was clear that the Democratic power base has a racial preference. Democrts are as reluctant to embrace change as Zappata (aka corporate oil interests of the Bush family), the HRHs and Rockefellers. On the other hand, Democrats won’t ignore a rising tide that helps them grab seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Tabletalk

The McCain campaign has been a piss poor campaign. It will be worse in the last days. It will stink on election day. Senator John McCain had nothing new to say. It appears to too many Americans that he believes in nothing as well. In fact, the hard core of the Republican Party, like the hard core of the Democrat Party, has been spiritually and politically bankrupt for a long, long time. The old guard, left and right, has nothing useful to pass on to us. Just some parlor tricks and more of the same old.

Perhaps Senator McCain’s lackluster campaign represents the folly of Republican prejudice that Americans would not vote a black president into office. Somehow the Democrats made the same mistake earlier this year.

So we shall see tears of joy on election day. And some of us will join black America with our own unbid tears as black Americans tell their story of how they have long waited for this day. Some black Americans will know and feel for the first time in their lives that America is home and that opportunity is not suspect.

Race Matters, Economics, and the Cause of Freedom

In the wonder of Senator Obama’s triumph, some may also face up to the truth that opportunity is something wonderful but that opportunity is not a welfare check, a hand out, or a hand up. It is what it is. Opportunity and not Pie.

Equality in dignity is not necessarily correlated to personal accomplishment, professional achievement, success, happiness, wealth and/or property. On the other hand, the problematic of a welfare state does not mean that we should not be concerned with the welfare of the nation, of the people, and of the person. The unfortunate paradoxes that we find ourselves pondering simply reflect the small mindedness– left and right.

Most of our American problems are not quite as chronic or inescapable as the commentators, government pundits, and opinion makers say. On the other hand, some of the problems are worse than we could have ever imagined.

America shall re-awaken

We are Americans. We have set the milestones of freedom, democracy and hope. For all nations. For all peoples. Yes, we can do great things. Yes we have done greater things than others have yet to do. And so I believe that America shall shine bright a few more years. Who else shall step up and carry the torch for humankind and progress? The French? The Chinese?

Mr. Faryna is the founder and co-founder of several technology, design and communication companies in the United States and Europe including Faryna & Associates, Inc., Halo Interactive, and others.

Stan Faryna is also a Global Voices author and translator. Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

Mr. Faryna also served as editor-in-chief of Black and Right (Praeger Press, 1996), a landmark collection of socio-political essays by important American thinkers including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Copyright

Copyright 1996 to 2008 by Stan Faryna.

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